Aperture vs Lightroom: The Aperture X Rumor

At the end of Decem­ber, 2012, the tech blogs had fun with a rumor of Aper­ture X — a new update to Aper­ture with an early 2013 release date.

The basis for all of this spec­u­la­tion came from a forth­com­ing book title spot­ted on Amazon.com.

It’s a good time for these rumors. The last major release of Aper­ture came out in early 2010, so it’s easy to spec­u­late that the next major release will also come out early in the year. In rumor the­ory, that’s per­fectly logical.

Even the name itself came under scrutiny. Instead of Aper­ture 4, this new ver­sion called Aper­ture X gave hope to a com­plete rewrite and changed to the Aper­ture that we know. Since the last release of Final Cut Pro was also titled as ver­sion X, this must be plau­si­ble proof that the same changes are com­ing to Aper­ture. Never mind that Final Cut Pro and Aper­ture serve dif­fer­ent mar­kets and needs.

Some Inter­net Mar­keter — hop­ing to cash-in on the new ver­sion — even reg­is­tered ApertureX.net and is try­ing to sell it. I hope he appre­ci­ates the back link, but I wouldn’t rec­om­mend pay­ing for that domain.

The Prob­lem with the Aper­ture X Rumor

While all of these lit­tle clues may be tit­il­lat­ing to rumor mon­gers and the eas­ily excited, there’s not much of a rea­son to get excited. You see, we’ve seen this rumor before.  Accord­ing to a post on MacRumors.com from Octo­ber 27, 2009, Aper­ture X was sched­uled for launch before the end of that year. Aper­ture 3 — not Aper­ture x — was released on Feb­ru­ary 9, 2010.

All this Ama­zon list­ing means is that a cou­ple of book authors are spec­u­lat­ing that a new ver­sion of Aper­ture is due and they’re writ­ing a book for it. Are they under NDA with Apple? Doubt­ful. Apple’s secu­rity and secrecy about forth­com­ing prod­ucts is noto­ri­ous in the tech indus­try. The authors are prob­a­bly writ­ing the book based upon the cur­rent ver­sion. When the new ver­sion ships, they’ll do a mad dash to update the book with any new fea­tures of the next release.

Why not just wait until the next ver­sion ships before start­ing to write about it? Because peo­ple want books when a prod­uct launches. Because their com­pe­ti­tion is doing exactly the same thing. They know that much of the new ver­sion will work exactly like the old ver­sion. In order to cash-in on the prod­uct launch, they need to be as close to ready as pos­si­ble to release a book when the next ver­sion of Aper­ture hits the market.

What about the title? How do they know it’s Aper­ture X, not Aper­ture 4? They don’t know.  Just as with the rumor from 2009, the “X” is noth­ing more than a place­holder in the title. Like the con­tents of the book, it’ll get updated when Apple announces the product.

Isn’t Aper­ture Sup­posed to be Dead?

Apple upgraded Aper­ture nine times in 2012 - rang­ing from ver­sion 3.2.2 at the start of the year to the cur­rent 3.4.3 ver­sion. Despite pro­vid­ing so many free updates with some use­ful fea­tures, a num­ber of folks declared that Apple aban­doned Aper­ture and it was time for them to do the same.

How utterly stupid.

I have no idea what kind of logic deter­mines that a prod­uct with nine updates in a year has been aban­doned by its devel­oper. Yet, since there wasn’t a major ver­sion release, they con­vinced them­selves that Aper­ture was doomed and it was time to make the switch to Light­room.

Both pro­grams do a fan­tas­tic job. As I’ve detailed on this blog, each has some strengths and weak­nesses com­pared to the other. My advice to those who are think­ing about switch­ing is to pay atten­tion to those details. Switch­ing from one dig­i­tal asset man­ager to another is a big deal. Unless you find some­thing in one pro­gram that you des­per­ately need and it’s lack­ing in your cur­rent soft­ware — don’t switch! It’s just not worth the cost and effort. Since your edits in Aper­ture and Light­room don’t affect the actual file, you’re going to lose a lot of your work when you make the switch.

Aper­ture vs Light­room: Conclusion

I have no inside knowl­edge about the next ver­sion of Aper­ture. You can try to read the tea leaves and divine your own con­clu­sion. For some, that means aban­don­ing ship from a prod­uct that works well and is see­ing con­stant updates — free updates. My own spec­u­la­tion is that Aper­ture is due for a major revi­sion this year. I spec­u­lated the same thing last year. In the mean time, my cur­rent ver­sion of Aper­ture con­tin­ues hap­pily working.

The best advice I can give you is to avoid get­ting your shorts in a knot about an upgrade.  If you aren’t being served by your dig­i­tal asset man­ager today and some­thing else will resolve your prob­lem, switch. Oth­er­wise, for­get about it and be pleas­antly sur­prised when some­thing new comes along.